"Tell me about your "romance" with chocolate. An incident with vanilla. Give me a "journal page" of your experience with tapioca—or rice pudding. Bread pudding more like it?" 
Natalie Goldberg, Old Friend from Far Away

As a young girl, once I learned how to negotiate our electric stove, I had an infatuation with making the perfect no-bake cookie. My grandmother's recipe flopped every other time, so I made batch after batch, using up heresy's coco tins one after another, each day after school until I figured out why a batch failed. My family ate dozens of cookies, some too moist, some too dry, and some just the perfect texture, although no batch being the same. I blamed my bad batches on the level of humidity or too much boiling, but like my grandmother, my no-bake cookies are never perfect every time.